I bring you the most eclectic links around the web such as best bike paths, WeWork insanity, Chase United Quest card, Hasidic Jews and Covid, we travel to Venice and Lofoten, learn about personal finance and listen to a podcast to catch up on the latest investing craze shit, amazing story of a woman spy, amazing flat art, learn all rules of sports in short videos, we talk about Chase cards and cash back cards and I will give you a short history of Detroit techno and how we started it all in the 80s…My goal here is to have you read something you will not find elsewhere, learn something, laugh at something (perfectly okay to laugh at me!) and perhaps you get inspired by something. TBB on!
TBB Blog Mission: To Educate. Entertain. Inspire. In That Order!
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TRAVEL
Well, maybe I go back to biking: Explore U.S. Cities: The 11 Best Bike Paths to Explore U.S. Cities. These amazing bike paths in the U.S. bring riders to beautiful parks, historic landmarks, ice cream shops, bars, and more along the way. Are any of these a MUST? Like…bucket list item?
Missed travel? Well, how about a live stream of Ponte delle Guglie in Venice, Italy?
This post has super amazing pictures at Lofoten – Arctic Circle Anomaly.
PERSONAL FINANCE
If you are not mad about what happened with WeBS I am out of words: How We Work Vaporized Billions of Investor Wealth.
I loved this podcast! Listen if you only want to learn about all the new investing things going on. Always keep an open mind and…think!
In this episode of Infinite Loops, we spoke with Joe Weisenthal, Executive Editor of Digital News at Bloomberg. In this fun and thought-provoking conversation we chat: • NFTs • Bitcoin Believers and its viability • MMT • Robinhood…
Another gem by Jonathan Clements: Feel Better.
We likely made more good decisions than bad
What’s valued economically changes
Don’t overlook the role of luck
We usually don’t know how others are truly doing
We may have less—but that doesn’t mean we aren’t happier
COVID-19
I am calling it, she may win the next Nobel prize! Kati Kariko Helped Shield the World From the Coronavirus. Like another maverick me blogging away in obscurity until…ok, never mind lol. Another link.
Well, I ‘ll let you guys figure out where I stand on this but…Hasidic Jews, seriously? Hasidic, Devout, and Mad as Hell About COVID-19. Many Americans would recognize the dilemma of Reuven, an anonymous Yiddish-magazine editor who is anguished by his community’s moral failures in the pandemic. Link.
How could a community that prides itself on generosity and kindness fail to protect its most vulnerable members from a deadly pandemic? [And 90-95% support Trump!!!]
We are learning more about this novel sneaky virus every day…if only everyone else just stopped spreading it and causing more variant strains smh! Some good news: The Way Out of Brain Fog. One of COVID-19’s most persistent and mysterious problems finally has some treatments. Link.
In the meantime, in Michigan, I hope we don’t need to go to a hospital emergency room! Workers weary, patients angry as COVID-19 fills Michigan hospitals — again. Can you just lay low to relieve the overworked medical staff, WTF is wrong with bloggers blogging about mileage runs, airline fare deals and shit like that, Jeeeeeesus. Client’s aunt passed away yesterday, she was 80…and had refused to go get vaccinated…smh!
ODDZ & ENDZ
Wow, what a career, I had never heard of her! The Once-Classified Tale of Juanita Moody. On the brink of nuclear war, America’s bold response to the Soviet Union depended on an unknown spy agency operative whose story can at last be told.
I finally learned how cricket works lol! Rules of Sports…EXPLAINED! Very well made videos.
One minute of pure bliss for your eyes only! ANYWHERE CAN HAPPEN.
This artist is back with a second edition of pure genius imho: Flatland II: A New Series of Dramatically Skewed Photographic Landscapes by Aydin Büyüktas.
MILES & POINTS
HOT CREDIT CARD OFFERS: 80k CHASE Sapphire Preferred (& $50 Grocery store credit), 100k CHASE United Quest, 100k CAPITAL ONE Venture Rewards, 75k CHASE Ink Cash, 75k CHASE Ink Unlimited, 100k CHASE Ink Business Preferred, 60k CHASE Sapphire Reserve, 60k CITI Premier, 20k CHASE Freedom Flex & CHASE Freedom Unlimited, 70k AMEX Business Gold, 75k AMEX Platinum, 100k AMEX Business Platinum, 130k AMEX Hilton Business & Hilton Surpass, 150k AMEX Hilton Aspire, $300 AMEX Blue Cash Preferred, 125k CHASE IHG Rewards Club Premier (& a free night), and many more! Please use my Affiliate links.
If you do not see a credit card with my affiliate links, perhaps I could refer you? Contact me!
This section is about my hobby addiction of collecting frequent flyer miles and hotel points since the early 1990’s! Feel free to skip this section and parts of the next one if this is not for you.
Newbies: We have a friend who does NOT get it and we have given up. She thinks we are doing something wrong traveling on miles and points and there is nothing we can say to prove her wrong. And we have given up. Some people will never get it. It is okay, it is not our (your) fault. Some people are just not wired this way. Be open minded, get educated, never EVER pay interest to the bank on credit card debt, keep learning and one day you may get it that some banks will pay you to get their travel rewards (or cash back) credit card…hoping you will screw up and milk you on the back end. Do not let the banks do this but you do it to them…it will go down on their income statement as…marketing expense, you are welcome! 🙂
There is a new 100k card offer, they keep coming: Chase United Quest Card: 100,000 Points Signup Bonus Launch Offer. I can fake my enthusiasm so you guys can get it with my links but I won’t. But please feel free to ask me any questions about it in the comments or via email. Really solid offer, especially for regular United flyers!
IHG Rewards is postponing the points devaluation so I guess if you are bored or something: Chase IHG Premier 125,000 Points + Free Night Certificate With $3,000 Spend.
Good ranking of all the offers from Chase: What Is The Most Valuable Chase Personal Card? The Winner May Surprise You. Do NOT place too much emphasis on the $ valuations, we are ALL different and most importantly we have different goals to start with!
If you are really into cash back, AMEX is offering a $300 signup bonus AND waives the $95 annual fee in the first year (your brain should be thinking FREE money!) for the Blue Cash Preferred® card now (available with my links). $300 is that all? Nope, glad you asked! The required minimum spend is $3,000 in the first six months. You earn 6% on grocery spend but only up to the first $6,000 per year (goes down to 1% after that, boo). You earn 6% on “select” streaming services, 3% on gas stations and transit including taxis/rideshare, parking, tolls, trains, buses and more. And of course 1% on everything else. It may make sense if you focus on cash back. And now Amex is paying you to get it and keep it for one year!
BLOG BUZZ
We are now entering BLOG BUZZ, a section for advanced hobbyists and veterans of this fast imploding hobby and also a section where I go on and on about some stuff that happens in my life because it helps me feel better about myself.
April 15 tax day is this week but…it has been extended to May 17 so I should have another post this week. Maybe two, we shall see.
I am taking a full week off from any walking and running jogging. To see if anything changes. Because not much has changed with the bulging disk issue I have, all the money wasted doing physical therapy. Looking back in my short running career, I had such an amazing injury free 2.5 year run! I wish I could rewind the clock so I can be out there in my zone running through the local parks listening to the birds…and stuff like that.
It has been a while since I recommended a song. Back in the 80’s, Detroit started the whole techno scene. I could write a post or two about the history, how it all started, etc. For Michigan based readers, everything started in Belleville, Michigan…yeah, sleepy Belleville next to Ann Arbor, you pass it on the way from the airport! Ok, I will be featuring tracks that were soooo Detroit sound back then that influenced the whole world and me too. One of the most influential artists was Underground Resistance which was part of the second Detroit wave in the late 80’s in the scene that blew open out of the crack epidemic and the need to escape it all futurizing and I could go on. But I am going to stop, here is the song Transition which I played over and over trying to decide what to do after graduating from college and could not get a job…so I transitioned to graduate school to go for a Masters in Accounting instead lol. Underground Resistance stood for the music, taking a militant resistant attitude towards the corporate music industry world encroaching in it, you know, very Detroit attitude, us against the world, in yo face…then came the Detroit Pistons Bad Boys, get it? 🙂 Years later came TBB and the rest is history I guess woohoo!
Underground Resistance – Transition [The MOST inspiring song ever, fits with TBB here!]
TBBon!
And I leave you with this…
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TBB
travelbloggerbuzz@gmail.com
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Loved the 1 minute of bliss, Buzz. I think I may be loving that Blue Cash Preferred too.
Thanks amigo, we will travel again, looking forward to visit you in Paris…soon!
At this rate, can’t wait for TPG to be posting “Get your CSP and Amex Platinum and Capital One Venture Rewards so you can fly your family of three to Orlando to visit Disney one way for free!” 😉
Transition by Underground Resistance
There will come a time to your life
When you ask yourself a series of questions
Am I happy with who I am
Am I happy with the people around
Am I happy with what I am doing
Am I happy with the way my life is going
Do I have a life
Or am I just living
Do not let these questions restrain or trouble you
Just point yourself in the direction of your dreams
Find your strength from the sound
And make your transition
Make your transition
Do I spend too much time thinking
And not enough doing
Did I try my hardest at any of my dreams
Did I purposely let others discourage me when I knew I could
Will I die never knowing what I could have been or could have done
Do not let these questions restrain or trouble you
Just point yourself in the direction of your dreams
Find your strength in the sound
And make your transition
Make your transition
There will be people who will say you can’t
But you will (you will)
There will be people who will say you don’t mix this with that
And you will say watch me (watch me)
There will be people who will say play it safe, that’s too risky
And you will take that chance and have no fear (no fear)
Do not let these questions restrain or trouble you
Just point yourself in the direction of your dreams
Find your strength in the sound
And make your transition
Make your transition
For those who know
It’s time to leave the house
And go back to the field
Find your strength in the sound
It’s what you gotta do in the first f-cking place
Thanks for the link to J Moody’s story. That was simply wonderful.
That was my top story of today’s post. The fact that I had not heard of her was a contributing factor for sure.
Thanks for the post Buzz, especially the rules of cricket and the travel section.
Hang in there, hope you start feeling better soon. I hate to say it, but I think this next wave will be the crusher of more hopes and dreams…and all it would take is 4 weeks. It is ridiculous that we think of ourselves as an advanced society.
On a positive note, the sky is still blue.
It is beginning to feel like, especially around me. Client’s wife is an ICU nurse at the local bigly hospital and he says…”make absolutely sure you avoid going there right now!”. I believe him.
I need to make time to watch the curling video 🙂
WeWork: I think the public (401k, ETFs) dodge a bullet. I’m happy the company didn’t go public. Looking back they should have done a SPAC. My S&P500 ETF is still suffering from the inflated price of Tesla. No matter how big you make the display screen in the car, there will be overproduction of mass produced cars and the margins will be poor.
Agreed on WeWork…could have been a lot worse! I just can not believe they fell for that douche bag…oh wait, they are still falling for Trump smh.
I have the BEST article on Tesla. Mostly, it is on ElonMusk, you will all love it.
Please, I hope they are not about COVID or his neuro communication company. Software folks rarely do well in life science. Just look at Google (verily). And look at all focus we paid to big tech coming up with solutions last March-May (how’s that SF Covid tracking app going?) And then it can down to biotech/NIH and boring big pharma to pull us out of the pandemic.
No, it is mostly about what a mega asshole Elon is 🙂
People who use WeWork (inc me, I am typing this is one) really like WeWork.
The users like it, which puts it well ahead of most over-hyped growth companies. The business model, of course, sucks as Regus / IWG found out 20 years ago when they almost went bust in the recession.
WeWork is just Regus with funkier wallpaper, glass walled rather than fully closed off offices and free beer. This is actually enough to allow it to kick IWG into the sand, but it isn’t more than that.
WeWork pretended to be a technology company. Was more like a cult. As a “real estate” company it would have had a chance. But it’s hard to raise $5B+ as a RE company. Someone else may be successful in a pandemic free world.
Been a long time since I visited the blog. (Dont really know why that is…)
But glad to have dropped by today. Thanks for the bike link
Hi, nice to see you back.
Not sure why you would not want to read about all these gems I find but then again…I am biased 🙂
Buzz-
On the AA game, I just want 5 AAdvantage miles in each of our accounts to reset the (worst in class) 18 month expiration clock.
I am a simple man, leading a simple life.
Oh, and to get to Paris to visit me, here’s a guide on the best way for Americans right now:
https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/D-Day/Stephen-E-Ambrose/9780684801377
Play this game, you will win at least 40 AA miles and reset:
https://www.dansdeals.com/points-travel/milespoints/american-aadvantage-turns-40-play-instant-win-prizes-sweepstakes/
So, OMAAT posts about the Everglades airport I posted about back on November 27, 2020 and finishes the post asking his readers if they knew about it. LOL
I mean, so many experts out there smh…
I doubt my comment will survive there, can you guys enlighten his readers and get them to the other side so we can convert them to educated TBBers, thanks!
Buzz-
Dan says AA will send a 1099 based on a value per AA mile of 2.25 cents@.
I have a call into Doug Parker. Deal of the year: AA can have all my AA miles for the low, low price of 2 cents@.
Lol…
Hope they do not 1099 if you win an amount that translates to less than $600 even with that ridiculous valuation. I am not there yet.
No blog post tomorrow, but will try Thursday. Got way deep into client tax work the past few days but do have lots of material and it will be hard to pick the ones that will make it in the next blog post.
Moron in the OMAAT post in the comments made fun of my blog that only two people read it. Actually, after a long time, two subscribed to get each post via email and I think they came from OMAAT lol. Some type of aviation expert having no clue about the Everglades airport you all learned about here six months ago
Southwest devaluing, which one is going to be next?
Can’t wait for the credit card pumpers posing as travel experts to post “69 reasons I love this Southwest card”…
Just told my daughter yesterday how much her Southwest points were worth…LOL
Earn and BURN. Yes, burn! Cashing out UR at1.25/1.5c/point is the best thing that happened to the HOBBY. Nobody should be sitting on 4M+ points!!!!
I like to burn on travel 🙂
No beds available at hospital next door. Ain’t going anywhere anytime soon…
Stuck at three conversions for the month, sad!
Madoff croaked, not sad.